Monday, October 7, 2013

Unusual Missionary Assignment

We started our week by providing family home evening lessons for two Marine families with several small children each. Lezlie turned our dog obedience lesson into a
PowerPoint presentation.It was the same
lesson we normally teach with Joy and Freckles, but we used slides with pictures of dogs, many of them ours, to demonstrate
the ideas.We first visited a family
with two little boys and a young girl.They enjoyed the lesson and the
brownies.They were a great family, the
dad a Master Sergeant in the Marines, serving for over ten years thus far.He was a pretty cool guy.Just before we left, the wife said to us,
“I heard that you are going over to Morrises to do a family home evening.You might want to rethink giving them the
obedience lesson with the dogs because they just got rid of their dog last week
because it was out of control.”Uh
oh!We drove to the parking lot of the
PX.Lezlie whipped out the laptop and redid
the Obedience PowerPoint presentation, removing all of the dog slides.We quickly made up an obedience game for the
kids using some treats we had for rewards.(We have a “to go” box in the back of the van.It has a bunch of our pamphlets, some videos,
and a bunch of kids toys and treats.This is our box for things we might need when we visit folks).We quickly drove to the second family and
made it just in time.In spite of the
sudden last minute changes, all went well and the family had a good time.

On Tuesday we had to address a computer crisis. Lezlie's computer crashed and upon multiple attempts to restart we kept getting the blue screen full of error messages. After two visits to Best Buy the Geek Squad told us the computer needed more memory, which we had to order online. The Geek Squad will install it once it arrives. Later in the day we met
the head chaplain of the base, and he was very cordial.He has to approve our status as on-base lay
volunteers, so we explained to him all that we do.It was quite interesting, because he asked us
how we were supported.What he really
meant was who pays for us.We said no
one, we pay for ourselves.He seemed
quite surprised. That same question came up about 3 times, and he seemed amazed
that we were true volunteers.Meanwhile
we had received a call from one of the young elders.He had injured his foot and needed to go to the doctor.So we drove all the way back to Woodbridge,
about 20 miles in heavy traffic, and got him to the doctor.They wrapped his foot and sent him to the hospital for xrays.We have found that transporting young missionaries is a major part of the job. Although it takes some time and extra gas, we love being with these young missionaries and hearing the stories about their work. After taking care of the injured missionary, we had to dash back to the base for our
TBS students family home evening.We got
there with brownies and lemonade, set up our laptop, and were all ready.Alas, no one showed up again. We heard they were probably in the field. We have decided we need to call the 5 single
TBS students and personally invite them to the FHE then see what happens next. .

This week we also had an excellent
meeting with Chaplain Early, the chaplain over The Basic School
students.He and his assistant greeted us at the door and gave us cold bottles of water – it was a
very hot day.They were the friendliest,
most cordial, and most interested of all the chaplains we have met thus
far.They pointed to the chapel and
said, “This space is yours to use anytime you want as long as it is not
scheduled for something else.”They were
very knowledgeable about what we do, and had nice things to say about
our predecessors.They promised to keep us in
the loop with all the information about TBS and invited us to attend the
graduations.It was a great meeting and
we felt a true welcome from them.After
a few errands around the base we were able to deliver brownies to a family we
had not yet met, a plant to a family that just moved
into a new house on base, and dinner to a young couple
that are expecting their first child.The last family were great fun to talk
with.We had a lot in common; she was
raised in Washington and is a Husky football fan, they like dogs, and had a huge English Bulldog- and she is a
school teacher.So we had a great chat
with them.We ended with a nice
spiritual thought and a prayer.

Our Thursday turned out to be a quiet day at home. Lezlie tried to doctor her cold. We did a little shopping, caught up on a few chores at the apartment, and prepared
the lesson for the OCS guys on Sunday.Then we had three sister missionaries that live in our apartment complex come over
for dinner; Sisters Allen, Rushton, and Dally.The reason there are 3 is that Sister Allen’s companion had to return
home for medical reasons.She will get a
new companion next week.We served them
salad, pizza, and hot fudge sundaes.It
was great fun, and we really enjoyed getting to know the sisters better.Sister Allen danced in high school, Sister
Rushton was in student government, and Sister Dally was on the stage crew for
drama club.Amazing girls, and so confident
and diligent.We showed them our
obedience family home evening lesson and they were impressed with Lezlie's amazing
PowerPoint skills.

After a bright and early start we arrived in
Annapolis by 9:30am Saturday morning, found a parking spot on the Academy grounds, and went
directly to the Midshipman Store for souvenirs.We ran into good friends and company mates Mike and Karen Simon.So good to see them!After spending too much money in the store we
headed toward the meeting spot where a large Class of 73 photo was being
taken.There we found John and Sharlynn
McHenry and John and Robyn Benjamin, two more guys in my company.How wonderful to see them and get
caught up after so many years.After the
photo we met Marvin and Debbie Eggleston and went to a memorial service with
them.It honored the 68 class of 73 members
that have died, some while we were still at the academy and many after.So many died in air crashes.It was a nice memorial service – they did a
good job keeping it positive and uplifting.Next we drove to the condo of Dennis and Paula Vito, another company
mate that resides part time in Annapolis.More of my company were there and we got to visit, catch up, and tell
more stories – Steve and Gail Sudkamp, Kent Porter and his wife, Ruth and Dave
Leather, and Bruce Metrick.A couple of
hours of sharing memories later we headed for our hotel, changed into our fancy
clothes, and went to the Annapolis Yacht Club for our company dinner.There were more company mates there – Eric
and Debbie Swanson, Pat and Jane Fogarty, Tom and Sue Wilson, and Joe
Doswell, as well as Rick and Pam Lash.It was simply fantastic
visiting with these guys.We went
through 4 tough years together at the academy, and we all helped each other
every step of the way.So I feel real
love and kinship with all of them.They
will always be friends.We wore our missionary nametags to the
dinner, of course, and that led to many interesting discussions about what we are doing.It all seemed to go by too quickly, and soon
we had to say our goodbyes and head back to our hotel. The photo to the left is us in front of Tecumsah in his war paint, ready to do battle against Air Force in football. (Navy won!). The other is me in front of the submarine monument.

On Saturday we picked up several young missionaries to transport them to the Stake
Center for General Conference.After a
wonderful conference session all of the missionaries, including us, were
treated to a fantastic lunch.There is a
lady in one of the wards who is originally from Guatemala.Every conference she feed all the
missionaries meals of South American food in between conference
sessions on Saturday and Sunday. This is not trivial as there are about 50 missionaries there. So we
had a fabulous lunch with the young missionaries.She had tons of food – enchiladas, chicken
and rice, turkey, fancy bread, potatoes, some pies, ice cream, and lots more.Then we gathered in a circle and sang to her
and her helper friends just to say thanks.We have Spanish speaking missionaries here, and they thanked her in
Spanish.It was a wonderful
experience.After an excellent afternoon
session of conference we took a batch of elders home and finally settled down
to work in our home. This is a picture of some of our zone and the ladies that served us lunch.

Sunday morning we got up and
left for the base at o-dark-30 because our OCS sacrament service
started at 6:40am.Once again it was
humbling and inspirational to mingle with these dedicated young men and women
undergoing marine officer training.They
were more relaxed as they entered the room this time, and greeted us with hugs,
smiles and warm handshakes.We were
pleased that 2 additional guests showed up, making our total eleven.I gave a lesson on overcoming and learning
from adversity, relating it to their experience in OCS school and tying it in
to our visit to Liberty Jail.It was a
moving experience to hear them share about overcoming adversity in their
lives.One young man told of being sent
to Afghanistan for 9 months right after he got married.Another told how hard OCS training was for
him, but he was persevering.Mom baked 4 dozen of the raisin
bran muffins (grandmother’s recipe).The
11 students there ate all but about 5 of the muffins, accompanied by large quantities of
apple butter, butter, juice and milk.All
too soon we had to tell them goodbye, but we will see them again on Wednesday for a
FHE. My phone had rung right during the
middle of the service, so as soon as we got home I called back.It was one of the young elders telling me
that Elder Cullimore, of the other senior missionary couple in this area, was in
the emergency room.We threw our Sunday
clothes back on and dashed over to the hospital.He had not been feeling well and
he kind of collapsed early in the morning. So his wife took him to the ER.They were
investigating a possible heart problem or maybe blood poisoning.We visited with them for awhile and offered
as much comfort as we could. The young elders had already gone over and administered a blessing. He was quite sick.

When we were in Annapolis we received a call from our Mission President.He apologized profusely saying he had an “above and beyond”request.The Stake south of here had a family history booth at the Virginia State Fair. Early on President Wilson had agreed that young missionaries could help man the booth occasionally.The contract for setting up this boothincluded that it had to be there and be open every day of the fair, which included Sunday.Somehow the Stake folks decided that they would use some young missionaries to man the booth on Sunday.When President Wilson heard about this he said no, the missionaries need to be watching General Conference on Sunday.Knowing that we have internet and can watch conference later, he asked if we could possibly man the booth Sunday afternoon.We said sure, we would be glad to help out.It was an hour drive down to the
fair site, and we met up with our coworker who was from the Richmond area.It was actually pretty small for a
state fair, but it was pretty typical – lots of people and animals, a good size
carnival, and tons of food booths, mostly with fried everything.Although
things started out slowly, the number of visitors picked up and we were
busy almost the whole time.We helped
lots of folks create a basic pedigree chart and found many previously unknown
ancestors.Although we were tired at the
end of our 6 hour shift, it was really fun to do something totally
different. This may have been the most unusual missionary assignment we will get for our entire mission. We did not arrive home until
10pm, and immediately collapsed into bed. A tiring but wonderful missionary week.

1 comment:

How cool that you got to help out at the state fair. I've actually never been to the fair in Richmond--mostly to the county fairs (which don't seem to be quite the big deal that they are in the West). Thanks for sharing!